


In The Candlelight

by Stylish_Racoon



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mild Spoilers?, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 06:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20286757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stylish_Racoon/pseuds/Stylish_Racoon
Summary: Before the final battle with Edelgard, Felix and Sylvain share a night together.





	In The Candlelight

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a drabble than a story, but I wanted to practice some characterization! I love this pair! Hope you can enjoy :)

Felix roused with a start. His eyes opened to darkness, heart dancing in his chest while his breaths stuck to his throat in every other inhale.

It took a while for his brain to catch up with his body and in the midst of the sleep-induced fog, Felix raised his head and blinked at the pitch-darkness of his room. The candle must have burnt out, he thought and without hesitation, magic found its way to his fingertips. The room lit up in an instant, its shades sharper, tougher-looking than they really were, scarier even, but Felix wasn't one to be afraid of the darkness or its secrets, and walked right into it.

As he stood, his free hand touched the middle of his chest and lingered. In his mind, he kept searching in the fragments of his mind for traces of a nightmare, of a dream gone bad, he searched his body for a poison or cursed magic, only to find nothing — nothing that could explain the rapid beating of his heart.

He let his hand fall by his side. The sheets on his bed rustled.

"Felix?" called a voice coated with sleep.

Felix shuffled across the soft mat, stumbling on the chair of his desk and cussing under his breath. "I'm here, I'm here," he muttered.

Sylvain whined, patting the bed and tossing, "It's cold, come back."

"Hush, stupid. I am trying to find another candle."

A drawn-out groan echoed around the narrow walls and the sheets rustled once again. In the limited light, Felix fumbled with his desk and drawers, until he found the one he kept the candles in. Tugging two out, he sought out the holders, removed the burnt out ones and replaced them with the new ones. With a snap of his fingers, the magic was gone and the candles were burning. The room lit up again.

Felix let his gaze relax in the flames. He touched the middle of his chest again.

"Felix."

It was firmer this time, not questioning. He sighed. His heart slowed down. "I'm fine."

"Then come back to bed. I told you I'm cold."

Scoffing, Felix walked to his bed. There, splayed across his sheets, head on his pillow and arms folded underneath — there he laid. He wore his smile bright and shitty, his red hair either curling in the air towards random directions or fanning on against his arms. The light was dim, pale, and it made him look even paler in comparison to how his skin glowed normally. Felix's breath stuttered in his throat, but for a different reason.

"You're trouble even when you sleep," he muttered. His eyes traveled to bare, sharply cut hips and rolled. "Cover your shame."

Instead of complying, Sylvain grasped Felix's fingers and tugged. The tilt of his mouth then turned sly. "It wasn't shame a few hours ago."

Felix snorted, despite himself. "Move over," he said.

"And go where exactly?" Sylvain shook his head. "C'mere."

He tugged harder then, his strength surprising compared to how often he slacked off during practice, and forced Felix to kneel on the mattress to regain his balance. An arm wrapped around his waist then and toppled him over, his body bouncing on the mattress while his back pressed against the cold, rocky wall. Felix hissed from the cold, but the insults that built up his tongue died as soon as a warm, calloused hand slid up the back of his naked thigh, hoisting it over a narrow waist. Sylvain's chest moved faster as soon as they settled in their makeshift position. Felix tried to hide he was in the same state.

Thunder sparked upon his fingertips, and he wiggled them in front of Sylvain's face. "I'll kill you if you ever pull a stunt like that again."

Sylvain hummed. He nuzzled Felix's hair, planting a tender kiss on top of his head. "It's really hard for two grown men such as ourselves to share a single bed, isn't it."

Felix withdrew the spell and laid his head to rest on Sylvain's shoulder. "You're the one who knocked on my door."

"But you let me in."

"Shut your mouth and sleep already."

The chest under his cheek shook in laughter and Felix pressed his smile in the skin of the shoulder, to let it be known without admitting it. He thought Sylvain would tease him about it like he always did, but he held onto his silence instead.

Like them, the night was eerie, abnormally quiet and electric. Usually, Felix could hear his comrades dashing in the hallways, shouts of joys or laughter, jokes and youthful pranks shattering the silence even during the late or the early hours, but that specific night they all found solace in it. The future was grim. The blood of their comrades, of those they called friends back in the day, burned on their hands. They all had to gather all their strength, void their souls of crushing guilt and doubt, and ensure they survived the next days.

It wasn't easy. It never was.

Fingers in his hair brought his thoughts to a halt and his heart at rest. Felix sighed. It had always been like that with them, even as children; Felix was the torrent and Sylvain the ocean he poured in; the push and the pull. Felix ran to Sylvain with his worries, with screams and tears as a child, with long, tortuous silences as an adult, and Sylvain soothed him with a touch, a smile, a perfectly uttered word.

"Sleep isn't easy. Not tonight," his smooth voice filled the air, "But you too — try to fall asleep again."

Felix pushed his fingers in the coarse hair gathered between Sylvain's pectorals. "I am fine," he said, but he wasn't sure if it was the truth.

"Tomorrow we fight Edelgard and death seems..." Sylvain trailed off, sighing. "It feels closer than usual. Who knows what she'll do when she's cornered like that."

It was a fear they all shared — the fear of loss, of death, of Edelgard going rampant and destroying everything in her path. She was known for her ruthlessness, her strength, her adamant will and excellent leadership skills, even back when they were teenagers in the academy. Falling to his demise by her weapon was a frequent nightmare of his. Felix licked his lips. "Whatever she does," he sighed, "I won't let you die."

"But what if _you_ die?"

He snorted. "Fool. I'd never die before you."

Sylvain chuckled again, and Felix felt it stronger against his chest than heard it by his ears. The fingers in his hair slipped lower, to the base of his neck and massaged. "When you say it like that," Sylvain said, "It makes it easy to believe it will happen."

Felix touched the scars littering the skin, one above his nipple, another slicing through his shoulder, a burn mark on his stomach, a healing one underneath his clavicle. "Have you thought about what you will do after the war is over?" he asked.

"Considering we win?"

"We _will_ win," Felix claimed with a certainty he did not feel to the fullest. To Sylvain's silence, he added, "I decided I shall wait until my scars heal. Then help the boar build Fòdlan from scratch. He is an idiot, he cannot march an inch without me."

Sylvain snorted. "I might put in my few cents on that plan as well. But first, I am going to help Lysithea get rid of one or both of her Crests. You know their coexistence shortens her lifespan, right?"

"So I have heard."

"I shall help her with that." He shifted, pulled Felix closer to his chest. "Maybe get my own Crest removed in the process too," he said, "My family will disown me and deprived as I will be of my noble status, I'll serve his Highness' army until the day I die."

"Sounds like a plan fitting for a loser like you," Felix teased.

"I'm not finished yet."

Sylvain moved then, pushing Felix until his back contacted with the bouncy mattress. The sheets were already warmed by his body heat, but trapped as he was within his large, if not larger, frame, Felix could feel none of the chill of the night. A leg locked around his waist now, and hands tugged the sheets until their bottom halves were sheltered. Then, Sylvain cupped Felix's face with both hands. He wore a smile, one that wrinkled his eyes at the corners, one he didn't wear often, a smile Sylvain had, throughout the years they had known each other, only showed to Felix. Sylvain was always all smiles and winks, to his comrades, to the ladies he used to chase the skirts of before Felix claimed him, but some things, he reserved only for moments like this.

The air between them hang heavy, loaded with unspoken words and warrior oaths. Sylvain's breath hot on Felix's lips.

"So?" Felix asked, to mask the nerves around his stomach, the erratic beat of his heart, "You were saying?"

"What's for certain though," Sylvain spoke, his voice covered in silk, each word caressed like a lover. "...is that I'll ask you to marry me."

Felix quirked an eyebrow. "You'll do what now?"

"Ask you to marry me," Sylvain echoed. He leaned in and kissed Felix's forehead, and a smile stretch on his skin as Sylvain's lips lingered. "So we stay together until our dying days."

Felix's chest swelled, threatening to burst at the seams. His eyes slipped closed, fingers trudging up Sylvain's side, the touch light enough to have him shiver in his arms, the very same way his soul shivered at the sound of these words. He breathed in, Sylvain's scent, the warmth he radiated like the sun during spring. He exhaled, "Bold of you to assume I will choose such a hideous fate."

Sylvain's chest shook under the pads of his fingers as he laughed at the jab. Rough, but pliant lips trailed lower down his face until they hovered above a pair they knew all to well — a pair which knew them the same way. Teasing, he then pulled back and their gazes met. "I can think of worse things than spending your life with me."

His brown eyes glimered in the dim light, brighter than the candle flames and the stars in the sky. Felix felt weak. His head was spinning. "I don't even like you, Sylvain," he lied, he joked, and pulled the body in his arms tighter, "I barely tolerate you."

"So cold!" Sylvain wheezed. He buried his face in Felix's neck and whined in delight, "It makes me so weak when you're so cold to me."

Laughing, Felix whacked him at the back of his head without heat. "Idiot."

"I know that. But you love me."

"I do," Felix admitted, but it felt like a lie too. Love couldn't begin to describe the emotions he harbored for the man in his arms. It felt short encompassing the blood and the tears, the hours by each other's bed when one of them got injured in a battle, the nights the whispered each other's names like a sinful prayer. Love was poor, it was weak. But it was closer to the truth.

Felix cupped Sylvain's head, fingers threading with his hair and he hugged him close, close close, as if to incorporated him in his being. "Promise me," he whispered shakily, "Promise me you won't die on the battlefield tomorrow and I will think about spending the rest of my life by your side."

He had nothing to think about. Felix knew it in his heart, and Sylvain could read it in his eyes when he pulled back to meet him. He smiled again and kissed him gently on the mouth. Soft and tender it was, full of the joys of their youthful years and the bickers of their adolescence, full of the pain and anxiety of their present and full of hopes of their future; a seal to the promise hanging in their breaths that mingled.

When Sylvain pulled back they were both breathless, saved after drowning.

"I promise then, my love," Sylvain whispered above his lips, and it was final.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Thoughts?
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Stylish_Racoon)


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